


the feeling of drowning and sea salt in your lungs

by crimson_hue



Series: immortality is a special kind of hell that no one thinks about [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Minecraft Youtuber - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Angst, Bombs, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I Do, Im not claiming this shit, Insanity, Murder, OOC, Qauckity is more, Remember that Tubbo knows how to hack?, SBI are all gods, Suicide, Vaguely mention but yeah, because, majorly OOC, no beta we die like tubbo, sleepy bois inc - Freeform, this gets dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27889342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimson_hue/pseuds/crimson_hue
Summary: When he was young, a flood came from nowhere. Tubbo is seven when he realizes that gods don't care about humans.So when people ask if he remembers, he tells a half truth. He doesn't remember his family, his village. But he remembers his death. He remembers the sound of the god's laughter.
Relationships: None, i swear to god you fucks
Series: immortality is a special kind of hell that no one thinks about [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045197
Comments: 8
Kudos: 215





	the feeling of drowning and sea salt in your lungs

**Author's Note:**

> please i had no sleep and worked on this on one day.  
> Basically, Wilbur once made a video titled "Minecraft but every five minutes the water level rises." And then this sprialed forth. I'll leave the explainging at the bottom.  
> This is fucking dark man, but im so tired i can't care soooooooooooo

Tubbo is seven when he learns that the people he cares about are humans, and are so, so easily killed.

Here’s the truth, his party line. “I don’t remember anything before the box.” Tubbo reassures Philza. The older man believes him, and it’s no fault of his. Everyone rushes to say that he’s a bad liar, and to their credit he is.

But Tubbo’s always been a splendid actor.

Because here’s the unsaid truth, his own secret. He remembers the flood, remembers the taste of seasalt in his lungs as he drifted away into nothing. Remembers the laughed of two men trying to survive even though it was their doing-

Tubbo can not remember who they were. And in some sick way, he supposes he must thank them. It’s their fault he even bothered to look into gods, even bothered to go through the grueling pain of learning how to manipulate like they do.

He was expecting the anger to stay, when he finally learned from Jordan. However, Tubbo has never been good at hanging onto anger, so he returns to the home of Tommy and Philza and Wilbur and Technoblade.

When Tommy leaves, Tubbo does too. Because something about Wilbur reminds him too much of the laughter of the two men who drowned his entire village without a second thought. 

Tubbo may not hate them for it but he does not forget.  
He does not forgive the men for the sea salt in his lungs, for the way that staring at the gentle splashes of waves takes him back to watching the sky disappear as he sunk into the water, the bodies of his family floating upwards, and will he float or, or sink and never be remembered? 

Tubbo does not forgive.

He does not forgive when Schlatt’s laughter finally, finally rings a bell in his head. Tubbo does not forget his knowledge from Jordan. The boy does not forget the feeling of drowning. He remembers, and he doesn’t let go.

Tubbo is sixteen when he realizes that the people he thought were human are gods.

Here’s the party line, here’s his half truth. When Tommy asks him if he’s okay, Tubbo says that he can’t remember the festival.  
Here’s the full truth- he was too focused on how drowning in your blood is very similar to drowning in the raising water.

It doesn’t take him long to realise what Wilbur is when he respawns in the ravine. Tommy doesn’t know, and he’s sure that Technoblade is well aware. He is a Blood Good, after all. Tubbo hides the waves in his eyes as he grabs Tommy before he can go into the pit.

Wilbur’s laughter sounds like it’s from underwater, everything sounds like it’s underwater. Like he’s screaming as water silences his voice, as the fishes swim past him in apathy. 

Tubbo makes Tommy sit down and calms him. Once he’s asleep, Tubbo pulls out the book Jordan once gave him.

Pulls out the book and understands that if JSchlatt and Wilbur Soot so desperately want to masquerade as humans, then they will experience the horrifying of being mortal. He is tired of men allowing boys to fight their wars. 

Sometimes he wonders if that’s why Jordan allowed him the knowledge, what he calls Hacking. Because when it comes down to it, he doesn’t hate Wilbur or Schlatt.

He just wants them gone.

It’s laughingly easy to get past Dream’s defences. He’s a younger god, he isn’t expecting something like what Tubbo is planning. Plus, it’s nothing nefarious. Schlatt isn’t going to suddenly drop dead, that’s too direct of a command.

Just that a certain bartender lowers his prices for presidents, and Schlatt is ever the opportunist. 

Just that the white house is a little colder, that snow falls earlier. 

Simple. Small things.

There’s a bad cough going around. Not enough to kill a healthy person. Just enough to hurt. Just enough to chip away at an old man’s already decaying health.

Tubbo is patient.

Looking over at Wilbur, he already knows how well that will go for him. The man will end up killing himself, the trick is making sure they stay dead. Gods are forever, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t die. So, the teenager tweaks with the code. Separates the code, bit by bit. It isn’t surprising that Philza is a god, two out of three of his sons are gods too.

Tubbo suspects that it’s not just two out of three. Tommy has a certain disregard for his life, humans only get three respawns after all. Tommy’s only died once, but after you’ve died once you don’t act the way Tommy does, rushing in, no regard for the fact that it takes a second swing and then you’re dead. Respawning hurts so deeply, and you lose a piece of yourself each respawn. Unless you’re a god.

(Tubbo knows what he lost. His memories of his family. His innocence. His sanity.)

Personally, Tubbo is on his final life. He remembers the feeling of Sapnap’s sword through his chest. Remembers the feeling of the blood in his lungs.

However, Sapnap had not known it was his second life. Then the festival- if he dies now, there won’t be another respawn. Maybe that’s why he’s doing this, one final hurrah. He already knows that even with his sneakiness, it’ll only take one look from Dream at his world for the god to realise that code has been messed with.

There’s no saying that JSchlatt or Wilbur will figure out what he has done, and kill him. Tubbo is working against time, against the gods. There’s something cathartic about the fact that his double agent mode isn’t over, that he’s still acting.

While he can’t lie, god damn is he good at using half truths to his advantage. The one thing he can pride himself on after all of this that they can never claim he lied to them. What’s the saying? Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies.

The whole time he feels the presence of Big Law and Big Crime, guiding him the whole time. Toob is silent, but that’s usually how it goes. He’s pretty sure Toob is the only alter he actually has, Big Law and Big Crime are just the souls of an excon and lawyer that he picked up during his days at Jordan’s home.

Big Law helps create a final speech, for when he gets found out. Because he will get found out on the day of the battle. Wilbur might kill himself but if he wants to maintain the neutrality it takes to weld this power.

Before he started his plan, he had asked Jordan if he was right to do this. 

And Jordan had simply responded, ‘When gods walk amongst humans, they must expect human trickery.’ 

Tubbo lost his ability to give a single fuck if anyone thought it was fair. By the way Tommy still made sure to prepare food for Wilbur, he had already crossed him off as someone who most likely was going to kill him once he carried it out.

Technoblade might kill him again. He’ll figure it out before anyone else does.

And there’s the possibility that the dead gods might come back sooner than he calculated. It’s not that Tubbo has anything against gods, his teacher is one after all. It’s just that Jordan himself confessed that it was hard to care about mortals. 

As much pain as it brings him too, he covers the mark Jordan gave him for protection under layers of unimportant code. Dream might dig, but if not even Jordan could find him until he allowed the mark to be revealed, then Dream will most certainly not see it. 

There’s only three days until the final stage of his plan. Step one has already been laid down. Slowly poison Wilbur and Schlatt.

Up the paranoia in Wilbur with too many coincidences that are planned but not by who he thinks it is. Wilbur will be too out of his mind to remember his powers.

Make Schlatt weaker by slowly killing him with illness. He can’t use his powers if he’s the middle of dying.

When Qauckity joins, Wilbur is so full of paranoia that it skyrockets to an amount that Tubbo didn’t even think it could. Schlatt gets even sicker with his right hand’s absence. It’s not like he has many allies, Fundy is a spy and the others have already been distancing themselves from him after the people he seemed closest to left.

It’s stupidly easy. Gods are so full of hubris that Wilbur doesn’t care that Tubbo already knows that he’s surpassed his three lives, Schlatt has been having so many heart attacks that it’s not surprising to the man anymore.

Step Two, prepare the TNT room for Wilbur. Standing with so much fragile TNT and redstone gives Tubbo a bloody nose, but the boy can’t bring himself to clean up the blood. More TNT, more destruction to the SMP and L’manburg. Paired with it a button so sensitive that if a fly slams into it then it’s bye bye everyone.

At first, the plan was only the SMP. It’s only watching Tommy argue with Wilbur that he genuinely can’t bring himself to care. Everyone in L’manburg will respawn. It’s so fucking funny how out of the many adults in this fucked up world, he’s the only one who’s on his final life.

He’s such a minor character that no one keeps track of the lines on his wrist. Tubbo hides it with Tommy’s bandana and realises that it means nothing to him anymore.

It’s not in a way that gods feel numbness. It’s a numb that comes from not trusting a single person on this server that he can’t bring himself to feel anything more than apathy. Tubbo is such a good actor that he manages to convince himself it’s not acting when he smiles at Tommy as he goes on tirade on Technoblade’s stupidity.

The truth of the matter is that he doesn’t feel anything toward Technoblade. That he doesn’t hate him because he balanced the action of killing him with severely injuring everyone else.

Tubbo double checks that no one on the server will permanently die from his actions, Wilbur, Schlatt, and himself excluded of course.

It might bring people to their final respawn, but he won’t be what kills them forever. That’s all he really cares about.

The only things that are spared from the blast is the bench and the community house. He might be planning on exploding like everything. It’s not out of love, it’s more obligation than anything. 

Step Three is harder than the rest. It involves somehow severing the tie between Schlatt and Wilbur’s souls and their bodies. He has to do this while making sure they don’t respawn. Because at the end of the day, their souls are mortal. 

A god is made, not born. When someone becomes more myth than human. Of course, that’s not the only ingredient. Someone becomes a god when they abandon their humanity, abandons their tie to the mortal plane. 

He knows that Tommy has already abandoned him. Tubbo realises that his best friend stopped being human a long time before they met. A voice in his head tells him it’s flattering that someone as great as the other boy, let alone a god, would choose to spend time with him.

The louder part argues that Tommy only cares about his discs, and at the end of the day, he’s practically a pet.

Regardless, Tubbo tethers the men to the world, and the code of the world. He knows Dream has messed with code before, so he knows that the man can probably make sure that their souls can pass to other servers after he figures out the trick.

But he won’t be able to bring back their bodies.

It’s two days before the Sixteenth that Tubbo figures out the trick that he needed. He comes across a note in the book, added by Jordan. The soul is connected to the heart. The teenager is pretty sure that none of the gods, who would most likely kill Wilbur, would stab him in the heart. Oh well. Stab the bastard himself then.

Step Four is just a matter of wanting to be remembered. By this point, he’s already realised that most of this plan has been the work of trauma and that he might be more insane than Schlatt and Wilbur combined.

He laughs so hard at that, to the point Tommy asks him if he’s okay. He stares at Tommy before laughing some more at the absurdity of it all. “I’ll be fine.” He says, telling the truth. He will be fine, when he’s done.

Checkov’s gun. Finishing what you’ve started. Step Four is revealing his plan, after he stabs both Schlatt and Wilbur through the heart. Preferably after Wilbur pushes the button, at which point the god will probably have realised that someone tampered with the TNT.

Knowing Tommy, in a blind fit of rage he’ll kill Tubbo. He knows that Tommy believes he has one respawn left, because the boy himself told him that at least he’ll come back one last time.

By the gods, he’s probably going to hell. Anything is better than the doom he’s built for himself.

The morning of the final battle he gets up before anyone else, even Technoblade. That's one hell of an achievement. He’d be more proud if he could bring himself to feel anything more than a grim acceptance.

When Tommy gives him a final hug, before they march towards Schlatt. He holds on tight, feeling his heart break. Yet the sound of a gun firing haunts him in his mind and he gives Tommy a smile instead of words. Soundless so he’s not lying to his best friend.

At the very end, Tubbo is not a liar. 

He watches as before JSchlatt can give his great speech, he starts choking. His heart must be starting to fail, but he has to stab it now. So, while everyone is looking at the dying man, he takes his sword and walks towards him. 

In front of everyone Tubbo drives a sword through Schlatt’s chest. 

They cheer, and don’t stop when Schlatt doesn’t disappear. However, the gods go silent.  
Even Tommy hesitates, looking at Tubbo. He doesn’t look back. All he can do is watch as gold inchor stains his sword. 

He watches as it glitches, and turns to red. 

Tubbo makes eye contact with Tommy, who breaks off from a stare with Dream. He can feel Dream try to make him forget, but he just blinks repeatedly and acts like he was too out of it to notice.

The boy never says that he didn’t see it.

He whoops as loud as he can when Tommy becomes president. The two boys make eye contact, and Tubbo silently shakes his head. Had this been another world, he would’ve understood and become either vice or president. He understands that stare. 

But Wilbur is walking away, and Tubbo follows him. 

He hears fireworks, and then the faint calls of his name. However, Wilbur is in the button room like he predicted. Neither of them are leaving this room.

The man he once loved starts spewing bullshit, lies that sound like honey and shine like gold. Apparently his old leader takes that as a sign he doesn’t believe a word that comes out of Wilbur’s mouth.

(Tubbo tells himself that he doesn’t want to believe him. Tubbo doesn’t lie to other people, so he lies to himself.)

“Checkov’s gun, Tubbo. I’m gonna, hah, do you think it still works?” He knows that it still works. Stepping fully into the room, they stand only a few steps away from each other. Wilbur stares at him, and he asks the damned question. “Do you think I should press it?”

Wilbur only asks because Tubbo is the yes man. He’s not supposed to be his own person. Because the gods are so full of themselves that they’d rather believe the one human who knows their dirty secret is one dimensional. Then again, there’s probably others.

“I think you should.” He says, voice full of false innocence and confusion. “I have my own Checkov’s gun, you know.” Wilbur’s eyes light up and he lets out an insane laugh.

Everything feels like it’s underwater. Wilbur presses the button, and there’s a few seconds before the bomb goes off. Then the world explodes.

Like planned, the walls of the room fall. He watches as Wilbur’s face falls as the destruction goes further than the area he thought it would.

He waits for two minutes, face stone as he watches Wilbur stare at the desecration of the world they both cared about. Tubbo feels a special kind of insanity take him over as he doubles over and starts laughing. It’s not his nervous laughter that bubbled up when Schlatt started his execution.

It’s a new kind of laugh, a new kind of guttural sound that leaves his throat. Wilbur stares at him and he can’t bring himself to give a shit. 

Tubbo isn’t acting when he kicks Wilbur to the ground, in front of the full view of anyone watching. They’re so exposed it’s practically a stage play. The land that once brought him so much joy is now a series of holes placed in a rhythmic order to make sure that they're the center of the show.

“You’re so fucking stupid, Wilbur!” He shouts, sword at the older man’s throat. Tubbo ignores the tears that squeeze past his eyes and run down his dirty cheeks. “You and the rest of you gods!”

Wilbur turns from surprised to shocked. The man tries to stammer something out, but Tubbo isn’t having it. “Did you have fun that day? When you made the water rise?” 

The man under his sword looks downright horrified. “How did you- how did you know?” His former hero whispers, and something in him breaks. 

The feeling of water in his lungs, watching his parents bodies not turn to smoke, wondering if that’s what’s going to happen to him as he sinks.

“How fucking else would I know, Wilbur? Did you forget about the village that was there? Did you not care about the children who would drown, respawn, only to drown again?”

The god looks at him, barely breathing. Tubbo laughs. Laughs until his lungs burn. People are calling his name, and after looking around, he notices Philza running towards Wilbur and him.

He raises his sword. 

“Because I didn’t!” He shouts. Tubbo isn’t sure if he can do this.

So, before he second guesses himself again, he stabs Wilbur through the chest.

“I’ll respawn.” Wilbur says, as gold blood flows from his chest. Unlike Schlatt, Wilbur is a moderately healthy god. Guess he’ll suffer for longer. 

He yanks out the sword. Philza is closer now, better finish it now. Tommy is nearby too, but he’s just staring. Tubbo is used to doing everything by himself. “Maybe. But Schlatt didn’t, so what will happen to you, I wonder?”

“You might respawn, Wilbur. But I won’t.”

Tubbo drives the sword through his own chest. And then,

**Author's Note:**

> When Tubbo died at the festival, his sanity was what he lost during the respawn process. He spirals from there, and proceeds to plan how to kill the people who wronged him. Remember Chekov's gun? Yeah. That comes up.  
> Wilbur and Schlatt, though mostly Wilbur, flooded an entire area. It was mostly as a joke, and don't mistake Wilbur's shock at the end as grief. He only feels bad because it affected Tubbo. Also, sorry for all the times I misspell Chekov. Anyways, I might make this a series, might not.  
> About the respawn system:  
> You get three respawns. Tubbo's first respawn went to reviving him after drowning, the second one was after Sapnap killed him in Eret's control room, and the third one after the festival. When he stabs himself, he's permakilling himself.  
> or is he i dunno


End file.
